India's Maharashtra is first state to give surrogacy mothers maternity benefits

MUMBAI, Jan 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Western
India's Maharashtra has become the first state to extend full
maternity benefits to women who have babies using a surrogate
mother, a state official said.

All women in government jobs who have a baby using a
surrogate mother can now take 180 days of maternity leave,
putting them on an equal footing with women who conceive
naturally, the official said. The leave can only be taken once.

Surrogate mothers usually hand over the babies to the clinic
or the genetic mother a few days after giving birth.

"It doesn't make a difference whether the child is conceived
naturally or through a surrogate - the woman still has to look
after the child," said B.J. Gadekar, a deputy secretary in the
state's finance department. "We want to treat them equally."

India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002, and is
among just a handful of countries and a few U.S. states where
women can be paid to carry another's genetic child through a
process of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.

Surrogacy motherhood remains a sensitive topic, and the
government last year banned foreigners from using Indian
surrogates, hurting India's lucrative $400-million-a-year
business with over 3,000 fertility clinics.

Most women's rights groups in India are critical of the
surrogacy industry, saying fertility clinics are nothing more
than "baby factories" for the rich.

But Sakina Bohura at Akshara Centre, a non-profit focused on
gender rights in Mumbai, said the Maharashtra decision would
help women who are forced to opt for surrogacy in order to have
children.

"It's a recognition that surrogacy is a valid choice for
these women," she said. "It's a very progressive stance by the
Maharashtra government."
(Reporting by Rina Chandran, editing by Tim Pearce. Please
credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of
Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights,
trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)